‘I’ll do my best,’ replied Amazon, although all she had were her usual neat and unfussy clothes.
The servant then led Amazon to her room. It was like a mini palace in itself. There were, in fact, three rooms. First a lovely drawing room with antique furniture carved into complex patterns, and wall hangings showing gardens full of pretty girls, handsome warriors, proud peacocks, glittering pheasants, big-eyed antelope and fierce tigers.
An arch led through to her bedroom, in the middle of which was the sort of fairy-tale princess bed she’d always scorned as totally STUPID; but now that she saw it, in all its glory, she couldn’t help but burst into joyous laughter. She ran and hurled herself on to it. And sank so deeply it was as if the mattress were made from clouds and spider silk.
The bathroom appeared almost to have been carved from a single giant block of marble. The bath itself was huge and square, and Amazon reckoned she could do a couple of strokes of front crawl before she cracked her head on the edge. The taps were gold.
‘Tacky,’ she said to herself. And then she realized that the silent servant was still there, looking at her with humble submissiveness.
‘Oh, sorry …’ said Amazon, looking for some rupees to give him.
Suddenly his faced changed to a look of horror – in fact, it was close to terror. He shook his head wildly.
‘OK, no tip, I get it,’ said a startled Amazon. ‘But, er, can’t you speak English?’
The man nodded slightly, and then pointed to his mouth, and shook his head.
‘Oh, I see, you can understand English but not speak it?’
He nodded.
‘And I guess you just wanted to know if there was anything else I needed?’
The man nodded. But there was something about his manner that made Amazon think that he did, in fact, want to communicate something to her. But, whatever it was, he failed, and so turned away after another short bow, leaving her to enjoy the luxury.
‘I so wish Frazer was here to see this,’ she sighed. Yes, how much more fun it would be if her cousin were there to laugh about it with.
But then another thought crowded that one out. No, of course it wouldn’t be fun unless her parents were safe.
Although Frazer’s journey had begun well, it soon changed, once that fun flight was over and the little aircraft had touched down on a rough airstrip that really wasn’t designed for jets – even those as light and nimble as this one.
A jeep was waiting for them by the runway when they emerged from the plane. Frazer soon found out that it had been sent by a local police inspector who had known Hal Hunt when he was a boy.
‘How long to get to the village?’ Hal asked the driver.
The man smiled, moved his head from side to side in the characteristic Indian way and said, ‘Oh, soon, very soon.’
‘Very soon’ turned out to mean five hours spent driving on roads that began as potholed death traps and steadily became worse, until they were on tracks that were barely distinguishable from the jungle around them. Twice they got stuck in quagmires, which involved all the adults pushing while Frazer, the lightest, drove, working the gears to try to find some traction. When they did manage to get moving, Frazer, despite the fact that he was used to travelling rough, felt seasick, so much did the jeep lurch up and down and from side to side.
It was also incredibly hot and sticky, and the agonizingly slow speed meant that they never managed to get a decent breeze to pass through the windows.
They drove through a series of villages, each one more ragged and ramshackle than the last. They were often greeted by laughing children, who followed the jeep, begging for money through the windows. Good-natured Bluey could not resist the smiles, and he had soon given away all his spare cash.
Their progress through the villages was further slowed by the domestic animals that wandered around, completely, as far as Frazer could tell, at liberty. Scraggy goats, rather elegant white cows, hairy black pigs and lumbering water buffalo ambled along or squatted in the middle of the track.
As the gaps between the villages increased, so the landscape gradually became less cultivated: the paddy fields of rice grew smaller and the patches of woodland thicker.
Finally, an hour beyond the last settlement and now deep in the forest, they came to the village where the python had been filmed.
As usual, the village children – alerted by the grinding of the jeep engine as it struggled along the rutted path – were the first to appear, smiling and laughing.
The driver pulled up outside a hut a little larger than the others.
‘Headman,’ he explained, as they all piled out of the jeep.
There followed a rather hectic half-hour, during which Hal, speaking a mixture of English and Hindi, first tried to explain to the headman of the village – a rather self-important chap with a bulging stomach and unfeasibly hairy ears – who he was and why the Trackers were there. By the time he had finished talking to him, a surprisingly large crowd had gathered round them.
Soon, as word spread that the circus was in town, ancient puttering motorbikes began to arrive, often loaded precariously with whole families – father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, two or three grandchildren, arranged like a human pyramid.
Alongside the people came chattering monkeys, curious to see what food might be available from the crowds. Frazer was annoyed to note that they were rhesus macaques, their pink, very human faces bearing their usual sly, shifty appearance, as if they’d been caught doing something shameful. Actually, Frazer knew that he was being a little unfair – a bold macaque had stolen a candy bar from him in Mumbai, and he had found it difficult to forgive the whole species.
He was much fonder of the grey langurs. To Frazer’s eye, these monkeys had a more graceful air about them. He thought their wrinkled black faces carried a serious, respectable expression. They moved with a lovely liquid stride, like grey water flowing over the land. But here in the village it was all macaques, and they scowled back at him, no doubt sensing and reflecting back his own dislike.
And then the headman clapped his hands and barked an order for the old man who had started the rumpus to be brought before him.
‘While we’re hanging around,’ said Hal to Frazer, ‘why don’t you give Amazon a call and see how she’s getting on?’
‘Sure,’ said Frazer. He took the phone from his pocket, but before he could hit Amazon’s number a particularly bold macaque swooped down from one of the rooftops and snatched it.
‘HEY!’ yelled Frazer, trying to grab the phone back. ‘That’s mine!’
But it was too late. The monkey was already swinging away through the trees with its shiny new toy.
Frazer heard a laugh and saw Bluey doubled up. ‘He’s probably just going to check his apebook page,’ the Aussie grinned.
Frazer also saw the much sterner face of his father.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Frazer said, his shoulders slumping, ‘that’s coming out of my allowance.’
Alone in her palatial room, Amazon perused the new higher definition images of the journal on her laptop. Excited to begin with, her heart sank as she scrolled through the first few pages of the document. She’d hoped to be able to zoom in on some of the burnt sections and perhaps make out more of the words. But it was no use. She had discovered that a blackened piece of paper looks more or less the same from close up as from far away. She also wasn’t used to Adobe Acrobat. It seemed like an unnecessarily complicated piece of software for just looking at documents.
She started to go through the menus at the top of the screen, just to see what they did. A couple of idle clicks took her to the View menu, where she’d already found the way to zoom in on the page, and then on to an option that said Show/Hide. Amazon clicked on that and found more meaningless options, most of which did very little that was useful to her. Then she clicked on Layers. The page in front of her changed. The diary page was still there – charred beyond recognition – but to the left-hand side a panel had popped
up. The panel was divided into four boxes. In each box was a title:
burn1
burn2
page curl
distress.
Next to each was a little icon of a padlock. Except for the one that said ‘distress’. That had an icon of an eye next to it. She clicked burn1, burn2 and page curl. Nothing happened. Then, still not really thinking – in fact, her mind was more on the dinner she was shortly to have, and what on earth to wear – she moved the cursor over the ‘distress’ box and clicked. Instantly, the page of the diary she was looking at changed. The scanned paper became whiter and the writing at the top of the page clearer.
Suddenly Amazon was fully focused on the screen once again.
She tried to remember the ICT classes she had taken back at her boarding school in England. They’d had one lesson on Photoshop, which had the same layer thingies. Her fingers remembered what to do before her brain was conscious of it. She right-clicked the padlock icon next to ‘page curl’. A box popped up offering her two options – ‘show layer’ and ‘properties’. She clicked on ‘properties’. Now she was in a box with more options. Her eyes darted around until she found a small box labelled ‘lock’ with a tick in it. She clicked on the tick, which cleared it. Next, she clicked ‘OK’ and was back on the main page, with the diary. The lock had turned into an eye.
And now she felt a growing excitement. She knew that this all meant something, but her mind could not quite yet put the pieces together.
Now, when she clicked on it, the bottom of the page, which had appeared to have curled as it burned, was simply black. In a flash she realized that the curling effect had been added. So, her fingers moving with robotic speed, she repeated the process for the burn1 and burn2 layers.
Suddenly Amazon found herself gazing at a perfectly legible page. The very bottom of it was still black from the genuine fire in which her Uncle Hal had found it, but the words were all there. She read feverishly. Then she clicked on the next page and began again.
By the time she had finished, Amazon could hardly breathe. Slowly she moved the mouse to hover over the File Properties dialogue box. She knew now that this is where she should have started all along – where she could find the identity of the person who had tampered with the files.
And there, in black and white, she saw the author of the document, the person who must have made these changes, obscuring and hiding the plain truth that lay beneath.
It was not what Amazon had expected. In fact, it hit her like a punch in the stomach.
The name she read was: MIRANDA COVERDALE.
Eventually, the old man who had fallen from the tree was found, along with Anand, the grandson who had captured it all on his phone. Both seemed very happy to be the centre of attention.
‘Can you take us to where all this happened?’ Hal asked.
Anand replied in excellent English: ‘Oh yes. Follow me.’
The whole village, plus every other living person from miles around, along with a good number of the village macaques, now trailed out to the baobab tree in the clearing.
Frazer overheard Miranda Coverdale saying to Hal, ‘This is hopeless. How are we supposed to work with all these … civilians in the way?’
‘Miranda,’ replied Hal, ‘you’re the best vet I’ve ever come across, and you’ve a mind sharper than one of your scalpels, but you have much to learn about conservation. The key is always to get the local people on your side. Long after we’ve gone, the villagers will still be here. They are the true guardians of the land. We’re just visitors.’
That made Frazer smile. Usually it was him receiving the lecture from his dad.
‘Anyway,’ said Bluey, joining in, ‘we might need the help of these guys in finding the snake. It could be anywhere by now, and if it’s just the three of us then it could take forever to track it down.’
Hal spoke again to the headman and to Anand. Other villagers joined in, each pointing in a different direction.
Finally a young boy grabbed Frazer’s arm and dragged him to an area on the edge of the clearing, saying, ‘Come! Come!’
‘Dad … guys,’ said Frazer, raising his voice above the hubbub, ‘I think you should see this.’
The others came over and Frazer showed them the flattened area of vegetation leading away into the jungle.
‘Looks like you found the trail, son,’ said Hal.
‘It was my friend here,’ said Frazer, and was repaid with a big smile from the boy.
Hal spoke briefly to the headman, and a dozen young men – and one sharp-eyed small boy – were allocated to join them in the hunt.
The Trackers had the latest in snake-capturing equipment – although it still looked rather primitive to Frazer. Bluey carried a snake hook – an aluminium rod about two metres long with a strong steel hook at the end. Frazer knew that this was more a tool for handling smaller poisonous snakes, but it would still come in useful if they had to fend the animal off. Hal carried the snare pole – another long metal rod, hollow this time, and with a wire noose at the business end. The wire that formed the noose was fed through the middle of the hollow rod and emerged at the handle. Pulling the wire tightened the noose – hopefully round the snake’s head.
Miranda had her medical kit containing the single most important piece of equipment – a syringe with a drug to safely sedate the snake, once it had been caught with the hook and snare.
Finally one of the villagers was given a large hessian sack to carry the snake in.
‘We’re gonna need a bigger bag,’ said Frazer. But nobody heard him as they set off into the jungle.
The going was tough. The villagers went ahead of them, cutting a path through the vegetation with machetes, but that didn’t help with the tangle of roots and stems, interspersed with slippery mud at their feet. It was still light, but Frazer knew that in the tropics the night falls fast.
The young village boy who’d shown him the trail was sticking by his side.
‘What’s your name, kid?’
‘My name Randeep.’
‘Well, Randeep, I’m kinda hoping we catch this snake before it’s dark. One of my least favourite activities is looking for things that might eat me in the dark. Not to mention the bugs …’
The boy just smiled.
As the trek continued, and afternoon began to fade into evening, so the mosquitoes came into their element.
‘THIS is why I hate the jungle,’ said Frazer, slapping at another mozzie whining in his ear. ‘Seriously,’ he said, loudly enough for the other Trackers ahead of him to hear, ‘next time I want to go to the Antarctic or some place without bugs.’
‘You want snakes, then you get bugs,’ said Bluey. ‘It’s one of the laws of the jungle.’
‘I can live without snakes,’ said Frazer. ‘Much prefer dolphins. No bugs in the sea.’
‘I seem to remember that you and Zonnie had a little difficulty with a certain hungry squid, not that long ago …’ Bluey smiled.
‘But at least you can see the squid before it eats you,’ replied Frazer, having another futile swipe at his tormentors.
Every few metres the party halted, as Hal stooped to examine a broken grass stem or flattened fern or a groove in the wet earth. Each time he emitted a satisfied little grunt. Yes, Frazer thought. It means we’re still on the monster’s trail.
After an hour of the trek, all conversation had stopped. Frazer found himself at the back of the straggling line, with just the ever-faithful Randeep for company. He felt weighed down by the heat and the bugs and the drudgery. He was wishing that Amazon were there to keep him on his toes.
Frazer had never had that many friends of his own age – he’d moved around between schools, and even been home-tutored by Hal, so he’d never quite found a gang of kids to hang out with. The Trackers – especially Bluey – had filled the void.
But with Zonnie it was something different. Maybe it was the whole cousins thing, or maybe it was their shared love of animals and adventure, but th
ey’d just clicked from the start. True, they argued plenty, but each one knew that the other had their back, and would always be there for them.
Then Frazer was jerked out of his thoughts. There was some sort of commotion ahead. By now – under the enclosing canopy of the trees – it was dark, and the only light came from the torches held by the people at the head of the line. The daytime jungle noises – the screeching of the birds, the agitated chattering of the monkeys – had gone, replaced by the dry night noises of insects and the wetter burping of invisible frogs.
Frazer was pretty sure what was happening. They had found the snake and were going to capture it. Well, he’d come all this way and he was definitely not going to miss out on the exciting part. It’d be like eating your broccoli and skipping dessert.
He began to hurry forward to join in the fun, but then something stopped him in his tracks. There was a racket up in the trees, behind him and to the right. He pulled out his own powerful little torch and aimed the beam up into the branches. There he saw the unmistakable shapes of monkeys. For a brief moment he thought it was the macaques, and that he might be able to somehow retrieve his phone. But then he spotted the long tails and realized that they were langurs.
No real surprise, of course, seeing a monkey in a tree in India, but it was unusual to see them so active at this time of day. They had normally settled down by dusk, high in the canopy, where they would be safe from leopards and other predators. But these langurs had definitely not settled down. They were highly agitated.
And Frazer had an idea why.
He yelled, ‘Hey, Dad, Bluey, Miranda …’ but the others had already moved on far ahead. He thought quickly and then said to Randeep, ‘Hurry, tell my father that I think I’ve found the snake. They must come back quickly.’
And then he plunged after the monkeys into the deep jungle.
‘Answer, please just answer,’ said Amazon, as she listened to the electronic ringing of the phone. After seven rings, the phone went to voicemail. Amazon resisted the urge to curse.
Python Adventure Page 3
